Wisdom from the Elders

A couple of years ago I had the privilege of attending a Wachuma ceremony with Wachumero Hernan and Shipiba Maestra Lidia. Just the three of us. Hernan is from an Andean community near to the Sacred Valley and has a deep connection with the Apus (mountain spirits) which are very much a part of his ceremonies, and Lidia comes from a family lineage in the Shipibo Ayahuasca tradition. Both are incredibly dedicated to their medicine paths and I had known both of them for several years. Lidia was interested in Wachuma and we'd drank it together in the jungle a few times, but she wanted to experience it in a traditional Andean ceremony. This was also her fist time visiting the mountains!

We went to a small village about an hours drive away from the town, called Ccochapampa, and then hiked up to a large rock which apparantly is a meteor that fell there from space. It was incredibly quiet with spectacular views over the mountains. This was the first time Hernan and Lidia had properly met and I have to admit I did have some expectations about what would happen when these two medicine carriers from very pure lineages came together - would the ceremony be exceptionally magical? Would they share some incredible, never-heard-before wisdom from the plant and mountain spirits? Was I about to learn some life changing secrets from the masters?

During the cermony, Hernan gave us both an energetic cleansing with rosemary and ruda and played some music, but most of the time we sat in silence. And then, after what may have been a couple of hours, he turned to Lidia and said “How much does a kilo of squash cost in the jungle?” (If I remember correctly, she answered that it was about 3 soles, which is just under a dollar).

So that was it – when the medicine people came together with all their wisdom and spiritual connections, they talked about the cost of vegetables. I found it to be so perfect because, to me, that encompassed what the plant medicines are really about. The spirits, insights and cosmic wisdom are all wonderful, but they are basically meaningless if it's not helping us to have a better experience of everyday life, especially the most mundane aspects like buying vegetables. It was the most grounding and ordinary thing that they could every have come up with, but because of that, the most profound.

The whole day was incredibly grounded, focused on just being there with the mountains and the Earth. One of Lidia's highlights was finding a plant that helped settle her stomach, and Hernan told us about the problems the village was having with a water shortage and how he was doing his best to help. Where the mountain and plant spirits were most certainly present, the only thing that did not appear to be of this Earth was the meteor we were sitting on. No cosmic journeys, no crazy otherworldly visions, no big, life-changing messages or insights. More than any other medicine ceremony I've ever been in, this one showed me the most the importance of bringing our insights and teachings from our medicine journeys into this life – that being here, now, is the biggest gift that we could ever receive and is really the purpose of all of it, and the understanding of what it means to 'chop wood and carry water.'